About The Campaign

Why are plastic bags bad for the Bay?Plastic bags pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle and kill animals. Trash flows from our city streets into storm drains, which empty into the Bay. Ocean tides carry Bay trash out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area estimated at twice the size of Texas where plastic particles are more abundant than plankton.

Did you know?

Average use time of a plastic bag is 12 minutes.

Despite a 15-year effort to recycle plastic bags, less than five percent of all single-use plastic bags in California are actually recycled.

1.37 million plastic bags were removed from coastal areas worldwide on just one day.

Up to 90 percent of floating debris is plastic, which never biodegrades.

Plastic trash has entangled, suffocated, or poisoned at least 267 known animal species worldwide.

The Bay Area has com a long way since San Francisco passed the first bag ban in the US in 2007 - today, 76% of residents live in a city that has banned plastic bags.